With Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration projecting it will take 40 years and up to $12 billion to replace toxic lead water pipes throughout the city, aldermen are pressing for changes to speed up the work while driving down costs.
On Tuesday a pair City Council committees heard from water officials in Cincinnati and Newark, New Jersey, two cities that are far ahead of Chicago in their replacement programs in part because elected officials declared the lingering underground hazards are a public health emergency.
In sheer numbers what Chicago faces is far more daunting. Read the full story from the Tribune’s Michael Hawthorne.
Chicago hears from Cincinnati and Newark officials on how to speed up replacement of toxic lead pipes
With Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration projecting it will take 40 years and up to $12 billion to replace toxic lead water pipes throughout the city, aldermen are pressing for changes to speed up the work while driving down costs.
On Tuesday a pair City Council committees heard from water officials in Cincinnati and Newark, New Jersey, two cities that are far ahead of Chicago in their replacement programs in part because elected officials declared the lingering underground hazards are a public health emergency.
Newark agreed to pay to replace about 23,000 lead service lines rather than requiring property owners to contribute or making them fill out paperwork proving they couldn’t afford the work, said Kareem Adeem, director of the city’s water and sewer department. Frustrated by futile attempts to reach absentee landlords, city officials began allowing renters to grant permission to remove lead pipes connecting homes to municipal water mains.
City officials in Newark also negotiated deals with trade unions to train local people for a project that was expected to take a decade to complete but was all but done in less than three years. Crews fanned out across the city, Adeem said, replacing up to 120 service lines a day at one point.
“One of the biggest challenges is having the political will to get these lead service line programs going,” Adeem said.
In sheer numbers what Chicago faces is far more daunting. There are an estimated 409,000 lead service lines here — more than in any other U.S. city — largely because Chicago’s plumbing code required use of the brain-damaging metal until Congress banned the practice in 1986.
So far the city has replaced 4,255.
Ald. Gil Villegas, 36th, is proposing to borrow ideas from Newark’s program and require free replacements of every lead service line in five areas of Chicago chosen for a demonstration project, with a goal of doubling the rate the Department of Water Management presently is expected to reach in coming years.
“We need to figure out … how to get it down to 20 years, or be even more aggressive,” Villegas said.
Water Commissioner Andrea Cheng replied that the city’s goal of replacing 10,000 lead service lines a year would exceed the rate achieved in Newark and several other cities.
She cited challenges with finding enough plumbing companies to bid on the work, the complexity of construction in a dense urban environment and the need for more federal and state funding.
“We really will be going above and beyond what the average city has to do per year,” Cheng said.
More than half of the lead service lines replaced to date in Chicago were required under state law dictating how water utilities fix plumbing leaks. About 1,200 other replacements were funded by a federal grant to support work in low-income neighborhoods.
[ A decade into the work, Chicago is finally taking out toxic lead pipes when it replaces water mains ]
City officials last month secured a $336 million low-interest federal loan to expand replacements throughout the city beginning next year. But it is difficult for Chicago to dip into other federal grant programs in part because the city still considers as private property the section of lead service lines between homes and water shut-off boxes.
Current city ordinances only allow spending of bond funds paid back with water fees “for public purposes.” If the city took out general obligation bonds to finance removal and replacement of the “private” sides of lead service lines during the next decade, it would cost $83 million a year and require a property tax increase of about $55 for owners of homes valued at $250,000, city officials said.
Then there is the challenge of building trust with Chicagoans skeptical of anything coming from City Hall.
Even after elected officials in Cincinnati agreed to pay for complete lead service line replacements, only half of the eligible residents signed up, said Cathy Bailey, executive director of the Cincinnati Water Works.
“They don’t want us on their property, they don’t want us in their yard,” Bailey said. “So it becomes very challenging to try to move the needle and get more people involved, even if it’s free.”
A Cincinnati ordinance authorizes the water department to shut off water to a home if the owner refuses to have the lead service line replaced. Elected officials later urged the department not to enforce the ordinance, fearing stories about “taking grandma off her water,” Bailey said.
But given the well-known dangers — there is no safe level of exposure to lead — Cincinnati is now debating whether to use the threat of withholding water as another means to get the city’s toxic pipes out of the ground.
There is nothing like that on the table in Chicago. At least for now.
“Adequate funding has to go toward education and marketing, as well as customer support, to make sure we are walking residents through the entire process,” said Anna-Lisa Gonzales Castle, associate policy director for water at Chicago-based Elevate, a nonprofit group.
“Every Chicagoan deserves to trust the water coming out of their tap is safe to drink, to cook with, to bathe their children in,” she said. “And every Chicagoan deserves to trust their local officials will act with urgency, prioritize equity and engage them with respect when delivering on the promise of safe, clean, affordable water.”
mhawthorne@chicagotribune.com
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